Director: Kathryn Bigelow
Starring: Jeremy Renner, Anthony Mackie, Brian Geraghty, Guy Pearce, Ralph Fiennes, David Morse, Evangeline Lilly, Christian Carmago, Christopher Sayegh, Nabil Koni, Sam Redford, Justin Campbell, Michael Desante
Cert: 15
Region: B
Length: 131mins
Video: AVC, 1080p, 1.85:1
Audio: DTS-HD MA 5.1
Languages: English
Subtitles: English
Number of Discs: 1

A hurt locker, the Online Slang Dictionary tells us, is a metaphorical place a person goes when they're painfully unsuccessful in a competitive event - a just description for a bomb squad unit operating in Iraq and the basis of Kathryn Bigelow's first film since K-19: The Widowmaker. By mixing that film's claustrophobic submarine-bound suspense with the balls-out adrenaline rush of her most well known film, Point Break, The Hurt Locker is perhaps the first film to succeed as both a mainstream action movie and a critique on the war in Iraq, delivering thrills and drama in equal measure. The film has already won numerous critic awards and has recently been nominated for 7 BAFTAS including Best Film.

Smile. It's only war.

Anyone who watched recent HBO drama Generation Kill will feel on familiar ground since both projects were based on real experiences of reporters placed amongst American troops in Iraq. Rather than focus on a large group of soldiers as Evan Wright did with Kill, Mark Boal's screenplay for The Hurt Locker follows a small three-man bomb squad during their last 30 days of service. After Staff Sergeant Matt Thompson (Guy Pearce) is killed by a remote-detonated device in Baghdad in scene one, his replacement arrives in the form of cock-sure adrenaline junkie William James, played by 28 Weeks Later's Jeremy Renner. The two men working under him, Sergeant Sanborn and Specialist Owen, become unnerved by James' lone gun approach and a rift soon forms between the three of them. Crazy though he is, James proves to be extremely efficient at his job (he barely breaks a sweat when, having just deactivated one bomb, he realizes another half a dozen lie just beneath his feet).

Explosive stuff.

Brian Geraghty as Owen is the youngest of the trio and is often visited by the base psychiatrist to help him get over the guilt he feels about the death of his former Staff Sergeant. His nervous disposition isn't helped by James' tendency to break radio contact on missions, especially when they're surrounded by onlookers who may or may not be holding a detonator. Anthony Mackie as Sanborn has a much more level head but he too struggles with his duty to be there for James in the field while at the same time knowing he may get them all killed. There's a moment when James swaggers back to a controlled-detonation site to get his gloves where Sanborn and Owen hesitantly discuss setting off the bomb and making it look like an accident - just so they can sleep better at night.

Through the course of the film we slowly learn why James is the way he is. His wife (Evangeline Lilly) and their baby son represent the dull everydayness of life outside the army, but once he puts on that bomb suit he's a rock star. 'War is a drug' says the quote at the beginning of the film by war correspondent Chris Hedges and this is certainly representative of Renner's character; he's totally addicted. James isn't the kind of Martin Riggs death wish nutso you might be expecting, nor is he particularly pro-war - he just happens to be good at bomb disposal. If anything, he cares too much about the situation in Iraq, at one point even going renegade to track down the killers of a little Arab boy who sold him pirate DVDs outside the base.